The IFA was founded by the distinguished folklorist Dov Noy in
1955 and now has collected over 21,000 folktales from the various ethnic
communities in Israel. The IFA is housed at the Haifa University where the
folktales are classified according to tale types and motifs. It was the work
and passion of Dov Noy, through his creation of these Israel Folktale Archives,
that successfully put Jewish folktales on the world folklore map!

Dov Noy's name and legacy have been blessings for us all. We all
wish that Dov could be with us to enjoy this world recognition.

Israel Folktale Archives

Documentary
heritage submitted by Israel and recommended for inclusion in the Memory of the
World Register in 2017.

The
Israel Folktale Archives (IFA), named in honor of its founder Prof. Dov Noy, is
a unique, rich collection of more than 21,000 folk tales, based on Jewish oral
tradition and Israeli folk narratives, and collected from more than 5,000
narrators from 70 ethnic groups in several languages, with documents dating from
1956 to 1999. The IFA folktale collection capture the essential features of
various cultures: including the customs, beliefs, norms and values of Jewish
immigrants from around the world, as they were shaped over the hundreds of
years spent in the Diaspora, as well as the folk narratives of other ethnic
groups currently living in Israel, including Bedouin, Christian, Muslim and
Druze, in an attempt to encourage an open dialogue between the diverse cultures
and ethnicities in Israel. The collection was completed after the large waves
of immigration from Ethiopia and the USSR. Following this period, the
digitization process of the collection began, Which includes typing, scanning,
indexing the stories and rendering them accessible. In order to transform the collection
into an international asset, an archive website was also created, to provide
researchers and critics from all over the world with access to the
collection.

Folklorist and Author/Storyteller Barbara Rush writes:

Dov Noy loved people-and he truly believed that every person is
his or her own story. So he set out to collect and preserve them.Today
the IFA is a unique and invaluable resource for people worldwide, layman and
academic alike, to gain insight into the hearts and minds of the Jewish
people, Because of Prof. Noy's work, the value of story, as a reflection
of the human condition, has been established---and will live on.

Storyteller
and Author Cherie Karo Schwartz writes:

The Israel Folktale Archives is the single most important index of
stories in the world. The Jewish tales cross boundaries of religion, ethnicity,
time and place to form an ageless, timeless treasure trove of tales. The
stories are an invaluable resource for storytellers, educators, rabbis, and
anyone working with the diverse Jewish worldwide cultures. By the careful
cross-referencing of tale types and motifs, they form a unique and enriching
bridge to all of the cultures and places in which the People of the Book (The
People of the Story!) have lived and shared stories. I am blessed by and rely
upon these stories for inspiration, source material, and tales to tell with
audiences of all ages and backgrounds, as do storytellers worldwide.

About the Jewish Storytelling Coalition

To hear a Jewish story is to share the humor and warmth, wisdom and angst, earthiness and spirituality of an ancient and thoroughly modern, diverse and irrepressible group of people bearing a most remarkable history…